Marigold and Rose

 

Marigold and Rose / Louise Gluck 
New York : Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023, ©2022
55p.

This slim tale by poet Louise Gluck is a charming read. Marigold and Rose are twins, infant girls who don't yet have language but have rich inner lives. It is interested in words, language, time, identity -- sweet and yet thoughtful, it’s also melancholic in parts.

It's a quick read, short and plainly written. But there is so much in it, you can linger on lines and think about the deeper meaning in an apparently simple statement. Marigold is the quieter, more thoughtful twin, who wishes she could be appealing and worldly, like Rose. Meanwhile Rose thinks that she is all surface appeal and wishes she could have more of an inner life like Marigold.

Of course this is all a conceit; infants aren't pondering the philosophical depths of an alphabet book they can't actually read yet. But it's a lovely one, which highlights ideas of meaning and memory. Louise Gluck has said something like, "We observe life as children, all the rest is memory" and this is an examination of the looking part of existence. These infants, barely into the world, observe the incomprehensible and worry about aging, dying, loss, identity, meaning, even words themselves as a way to capture the world.

This is a delicate read, somewhere between prose and poetry - no plot really, more reflections and thoughts from an interior life. Is it a short story or a novella? Not quite certain, but it is a worthwhile read from a poet who has been reflecting on these issues her whole career.